Saturday, August 18, 2007

Checking in with . . . Karla Holloway

Yesterday’s N&O featured an op-ed from none other than Group of 88 stalwart Karla Holloway, on a topic linked to her academic specialization—mourning. (Holloway’s books include Passed On: African-American Mourning Stories.) The op-ed’s thesis: society pays more attention to the deaths of young whites than non-whites, seemingly because of racism.

Seeing a Group member suggest that American society is oppressive along lines of race, class, or gender is about as surprising as discovering that Editor Bob Ashley slanted Herald-Sun coverage in Nifong’s favor.

The stories of urban deaths, Holloway writes, “rarely leak out beyond the neighborhood boundaries, rarely capture the attention of national newscasters, rarely occasion the assignment of grief-counselors whom we know are immediately dispatched to suburban schools when an accident, or worse, takes the life of a youngster.”

The Group of 88’er implies, though never states outright, that she equates “suburban” with white or Asian-American, even though, of course, African-Americans and Hispanics live in the suburbs as well.

Holloway’s observations range from the conspiratorial to the banal. For instance,

Our nation has chosen how, and whom to grieve. We see the faces of the soldiers who will never return home from Iraq or Afghanistan. In the United States, they have certainly earned at least a moment of our attention on the national news. But we rarely see more than the blurred images of the mangled, nameless bodies of Iraqis whose loved ones will similarly mourn their passing. We do not know or inquire after their grief.

Racism might be one explanation for this phenomenon. Another might be that the media has easy access to photographs of U.S. soldiers (if not to their caskets), and little or no access to photos of Iraqis killed in the war. A third might be that nations (of all races and types) tend to grieve the deaths of their own citizens more than the deaths of citizens of other countries.

Holloway continues,

Locally, we come to know the stories of suburban schoolchildren and youths who are victims of drunken drivers or accidents on athletic playing fields or in our parks, and we can anticipate and depend on a pattern of a community's response to this loss. Counselors will be made available. Reporters will interview their families and will be assigned to cover, with a cameraperson, the crowds who come to funeral chapels and churches to mourn the tragedy and grieve with their families.

BUT HOW WELL AND HOW CONSISTENTLY do these same reporters follow the stories of the victims of local tragedies that are tainted with the violence that infects too many urban communities? How often are they assigned to appear at the churches, to follow the families to the gravesites?

How often does this phenomenon occur? Holloway doesn’t say.

Does she know of examples in which young people in “urban communities” (by which she, presumably, means African-Americans and Hispanics, although she isn’t clear on this point and obviously whites and Asian-Americans live in “urban communities” as well) were killed by drunken drivers or in accidental shootings and the story was ignored by the local media?

The Group stalwart, again, doesn’t say. Why let facts interfere with the metanarrative?

More from Holloway:

There is a reason that the phenomenon of T-shirt memorials—clothing with the face and name of a deceased youngster, most often taken violently, most often without even the fleeting attention of any but those close to the tragedy who will mourn their loss—have appeared on the bodies of black and brown youth in urban areas across this country. One reason our children wear their losses as T-shirts covering their bodies is so they might be noticed, and so that those whom they encounter also encounter, and are confronted by, their grief.

Who, exactly, are “our children”? Children of Duke professors? The article identifies Holloway solely as “Arts and Sciences professor of English at Duke University.”

How are the T-shirt memorials that “have appeared on the bodies of black and brown youth” (where else would a T-shirt appear than on a body?) different in purpose from the impromptu roadside memorials, often with photos, that commemorate the deaths of those who died in car accidents?

Holloway’s thesis, it’s worth noting, might well be correct. But the only example that her op-ed cites--the media attention to the execution-style shooting of three African-American college students in Newark--undermines, not supports, her argument.

By the way, the fall 2007 catalog finds the professor who rebuked the Duke women’s lacrosse players for upholding the presumption of innocence teaching a course in . . . the Law School.

Entitled “Race, Gender, and Privacy” (a/k/a “Group of 88 Does the Law”), the class “is aimed at students interested in the intersections between literary and legal studies, with a particular focus on race and gender. The subject of the class is ‘privacy,’ and we will read extensively in cultural and legal studies that have considered the matters of privacy-both in social histories and in case law, and we will devote some time to theorizing race and gender in literary studies.”

Perhaps, before entering the law classroom this semester, Holloway might want to take a refresher course on due process and the law from one of her Law School colleagues. This is, after all, the same Karla Holloway who:

proclaimed that innocence and guilt must be “assessed through a metric of race and gender. White innocence means black guilt. Men’s innocence means women’s guilt”;

declared that she would, in a “heartbeat,” re-sign the April 6, 2006 public statement that (based solely on information provided by Mike Nifong and the Durham Police) asserted unequivocally that something happened to Crystal Mangum and thanked protesters who carried “castrate” banners.

Not exactly a record that most would expect from someone teaching a law class.

[Update, 8.51am: Holloway, in an interview with Indy, provided this unusual critique of the public school system for “urban” children:

What we lost with integration was the intimacy between our education and the people who were professionally trained and culturally trained to care about us. Those teachers believed in us, and that is the most important part of a child’s development. Today, teachers say, “If a child has no books at home, what can I do?” My question is, “What do we do to help our teachers understand what our children can do, rather than what they can’t?”]

Here's a theory about the media's lack of attention to the deaths of young blacks and hispanics: they're avoided out of the same misplaced sense of diversity and solidarity that underlies virtually all leftist thinking. In short, the media avoids such stories not because society cares nothing for the deaths of these young people, but because liberals run the media and stick to the liberal script.

There is no question that young black males, for example, meet premature, violent deaths far out of proportion to their societal numbers, but to draw attention to that fact would inevitably expose many facets of contemporary socialism/liberalism as bankrupt, so little attention is paid.

Which facets? These young men are killing each other. By and large, young black men are not killed by young white men, or young hispanic men or young asian men, but by other young black men. And these young men tend not to die on the job while supporting their families, but in drug wars or during the commission of crimes.

Tragic? Of course, but again, none of this fits liberal preconceptions of class, race, crime or behavior, so the media treads very carefully. Which theory is most likely, Prof. Holloway's, or this one?

Actually, young men black men are increasingly being killed by hispanic men. (Check out LaShawn Barber's web site for links to some recent articles about how hispanic gangs are targeting blacks). In the New Jersey case referred to in Holloway's article, the individual charged with shooting the 4 young black college students is an illegal alien from Peru. Another suspect, an illegal alien from Nicaragua, has reportedly fled back to his own country to avoid prosecution for his role in the robbery/murders. (Look for him to show up soon in another U.S. city).

For those who may think that Holloway's relationship to the Law School is a remote, "interdisciplinary" gig: think again. She is described on the Duke Law website as a "key" faculty member in the nebulous area of the "Legal Profession", offering purported expertise in "Reading Ethics". The "Curriculum" sublink from the Admissions page showcases Holloway's course titled "Race, Schools, and the Equal Protection Clause".

Look, every time clowns like Holloway open their mouths they reveal to the world their vapid, small, and closed minds. They damage themselves directly in ways we cannot begin to approach indirectly. Ironically, morons like Holloway help our cause. Thus, I say: "Speak, you idiots, speak!"

I admit that it may be that I did not study her words closely enough, but I was left with the impression that public attention to events involving those of her ethnic/gender would be bad (privacy) but so would no public attention (racist inattention).

Holloway's op-ed is another "pin the blame on the white man" rant. If stories of black deaths are covered it is racist stereotyping of blacks. If the deaths aren't covered, it is because society doesn't care about blacks. Holloway can't lose. She can write the op-ed either way.

If Holloway is honestly concerned about the lack of empathy for the victims of inner city violence, she might ask herself how her support for villifying three white Duke students falsely accused of rape by a black woman is going to help.

More to the point, the issue for the victims is not the inadequate public mourning but the lack of police protection; the failure of society to protect the innocent from predators.

If Holloway is really concerned for the lives of innercity residents, perhaps she should consider expressing support for police.

I don't really know what Holloway has to say about police but some of the people who joined the attacks on the players have a lot to say about police brutality and gun shop owners but a lot less to say about policeman who are killed in the line of duty.

There is plenty said about the differing sentences for drugs that are sold in the city versus those sold in the suburbs. What such criticisms fail to take into consideration is the impact of drugs on the city as opposed to their impact in the suburbs.

While addiction can be a personal tragedy for the families of wealthy white suburbanites, it can be a social disaster in communities that are poor and black. The level of crime and violence associated with the drug trade makes ordinary daily activities difficult, adding a tremendous burden to the already difficult lives of inner city blacks.

Holloway is certainly a capable writer. Her op-ed is not filled with the incomprehensible jargon afflicting so many of the gang of 88 (and in fact much of the humanities and social sciences). But she needs to think things through. Encouraging the conviction of wrongfully accused people simply because they are the wrong color is not helpful.

Holloway needs to become part of the solution and not part of the problem.

This is lame. Outside of the fact of your hatred for Holloway and the fact that discussions of racism make you foam at the mouth, there's nothing to this piece. Come on, KC. You can do better than this.

One wonders if the notorious picture of Che' that is on most everything these days is meant to mourn Che' or those he personally executed? Who knew "Power to the People" really means having your picture used on coffee dups and T-Shirts?

Pap like this is typically shouted from street corners by local loons. She should not be teaching at any University.

The questions are not whether this opinion is accurate or important. What should be asked is what was not printed. Fuzzy theories about grief "branding" is not likely to sell many papers.

This is an opinion. Opinions are not worthy of scholarship. Duke now thinks they are, has moved these deep thinkers into leadership roles, provided departmental status to them, and has decided intentionally to not puruse higher order thinking.

Consider this. Someone on this site or their family members will die earlier than necessary because we are funding these loons instead of cancer, heart, diabetes, etc. research.

Deconstructing the higher order with pap that does not raise the human condition is not a good thing.

I grieve for the woeful condition of the academy. I grieve for the academy that we are leaving our children. I grieve that we are not to all we can to stop the insanity.

To the 7:13: Holloway holds a joint appointment with the Law School. Her primary appointment is in the English department. Her faculty profile states that she has a Ph.D. from Michigan State in "African American Cultural Studies, Bio Cultural Studies, Law". If she has a J.D., it is not apparent in her profile. The Law School currently lists 11 joint appointment faculty members. Most do not have a juris doctor degree. Joint appointments are substantial, more so than say, visiting or adjunct appointments. Duke Law prides itself on joint degree programs and interdisciplinary studies. Nothing wrong with that; however, Holloway's appointment, IMHO, is a "kiss the ring of the PC gods" appointment. Duke Law has had its share of those. Also noteworthy is that Holloway is not merely a tenured professor, but a chaired professor. I have no idea whether the Law School pays for any part of her salary.

We are dealing once again with "faux scholars." While Holloway can write with some eloquence, nonetheless, her writings are void of content. Like many of her other faux scholar colleagues, her writing ultimately is about herself, Karla Holloway, "victim" of racism.

I see Holloway simply as a malevolent person, someone who is even more embittered because it turned out that the people she was accusing of rape didn't do anything, and that simply is too much for her to take. Thus, in HollowayWorld, Reade, Collin, and David victimized her because they were not guilty of raping Crystal.

You see, it simply is not fair that they should be permitted not only to proclaim their innocence, but also to have it publicly proclaimed. Holloway was not prepared for such a conclusion, so the very fact that they were innocent actually (in Holloway's twisted thinking) victimized Holloway herself.

I am not kidding when I write this. People with common sense who are not self-absorbed like Holloway do not find a way to personalize the actions. They are angry because we saw the explosion of the Big Lie and believed that a monstrous injustice was taking place.

Holloway, on the other hand, was able to derive self-esteem from the "knowledge" that she had been right all along, that all of those white boys on campus really are a bunch of racist, sexual predators. Then along came the Blog Hooligans, K.C. Johnson, and Roy Cooper, all of whom "spoiled" her little "narrative."

"...But we rarely see more than the blurred images of the mangled, nameless bodies of Iraqis whose loved ones will similarly mourn their passing. We do not know or inquire after their grief..."

We also don't see what is being taught in those Muslim schools about martrydom. Blowing oneself up in public areas and killing innocent children and women is a part of the education system.

We don't see the discrediting of fake photos shoots; the abhorrent use of dead children being positioned on rubble, or the use of props like childrens' dolls/toys to drive policy through a horrifically biased, uncritical MSM that knows they are being used for PR purposes.

Miss Holloway's opinions are stunningly naive and dangerous at the same time.

Also the subtle use of cameraperson is also bullshit. That equipment is heavy and requires someone who is able to quickly move into location for a shoot. As such I would challenge how many women camerapersons there are and suggest that cameraman is a more honest word. Little lies, or big lies, what is the real difference? Of course this mentaltiy becomes dangerous when we start giving gender-based jobs through lower standards - Firemen for example.

Suppose, for a moment, that the newspapers decided, overnight, to triple their coverage of murdered "urban" youths. Would Karla and her cohorts suddenly be happy?

No -- she would just shift her wails and cries of racism to fit different facts. It's laughably obvious what she and the 88ers would say:

"All this constant news coverage of young black people getting killed, doing drugs, shooting each other, mixed-up in criminal gangs, dying like dogs in the street -- it's pure racism! Why don't they ever write about white kids doing the same thing? Why are the papers playing this up so much? It's racism, I tell you!" (Um, OK, Karla -- show us who these white kids are, and help us do a head-count.)

The fact is, if newspapers write less about black gang-related shootings than they do about the occasional middle-class Durham Academy youth who murders his parents, it's because the latter is a freak and the former are common as dirt -- not even news.

Moreover, it wouldn't surprise me if some editors play down black gang-murders from a misguided "liberal" impulse, not wishing to further humiliate a group of people who embarrass themselves every day by fostering and committing this violence. Why make it worse by harping on it, they figure.

Either way, the Karla Holloways of the world will always see the coverage as racist.

When will Ms. Holloway acknowledge the real problem? That is the rising drop-out rate among black males. Sure, she will probably blame it on a system that is inherently biased against black males. A large part of the problem lies in the fact that far too many children are born to women without benefit of a husband. A significant number of these are black boys without a positive male role model. Without guidance at home, they far too frequently view gang members as role models and seek to emulate them. They have little or no value for an education because they believe that there is not future for them in our economic society. There is no future for economic society because they have no skills--educational or business. The cycle repeats.Ms. Holloway needs to address this problem head on. Unfortunately the blame game is much easier to play. First card on the table is the race card. Then the gender card--it is the male population that forced the poor mother into a life of casual sex and sometimes for pleasure). The blame game has only served to push many black males deeper into this state of economic depression. Positive black male role models are needed. There are many in society. Will they step up and accept the challenge? Will women stop submitting to sexual urges of drive-by fathers? Will black males be accountable for their actions?Will Ms. Holloway address this issue head on? I doubt it. It is so much easier to play the blame game. Unfortunately, it will be the young black males who are the losers. Much like the use of the term "hos" to refer to black women, the source of the use was not the white community. She needs to be much more careful in casting those stones at the glass houses.

graph 1: line 2: "life-sized photographs" is redundant (see "images" line 1); line 3: "that took their lives" is redundant (see "murders" line 3); line 4: "news watchers and readers" is verbose; "again and again" is redundant--and so it goes throughout the entire article. She writes at the level of a sixth-grader.

Holloway is not a subtle person: she hates whites, and will take any stupid occasion to pillory them with her BS.

Does anyone know what asshole at Duke is responsible for this joke's employment?

Back in 1980 I met up with a college classmate that had gone on to become a TV news reporter at one of the networks in Los Angeles. Not an anchor (too young at the time for that market), but she got camera time every day. At evening newstime I happened to be at her house and we watched together. Even in those days I didn't watch much TV news; when I did I typically put it on a station and watched it straight through.

Not her. As a person who understood how newsrooms operate and how news is "produced", she flipped back and forth between the 3 major networks and analyzed both the content of the stories and their positioning (order sequence). She said what she focused on was not the facts of a story itself, but rather how the story was told and in which order the selected stories for that day were presented. Amazing! Who knew that the facts were completely irrelevant!

My point is that TV newsreporting is no different than any of the other shows that are on. They are all measured by the same yardstick -- ratings.

If Holloway is concerned about the coverage (or lack thereof) on any topic, she should ask the presidents of the news divisions at the various TV networks why so much attention is paid to one group and so little to another. If they're honest, how pissed off will she be when she hears it's all about the ratings, baby? She'll never know until she asks. Then again, maybe she's afraid to know or maybe she knows already and just can't accept the answer.

Is Karla Holloway prepared put her money where her mouth is -- to leave the cushy life at Duke and begin teaching in an inner city NY or Philly elementary or secondary school? Obviously, her understanding of black youth would do much to enrich the educational experience. Well, given her own life experience, maybe not.

In any event, my guess is she is not intested in the issue of public school education at all except to point out how racist it is. She is needed to fight the race, class, gender war in higher education. The thought of joining the ranks of teachers she so despises is unthinkable ... so beneath her.

Add hypocrite to racist in any description of Professor Karla FC Holloway.

There is no reason for Duke to be embarassed about Holloway's piece. In fact, the administration is apparently doing a great job because, according to Fox News, Duke was rated by US News & World Report (I think) as the 8th best university in the country. Duke's administration has little incentive to change course. It seems that image is everything to Americans, and that's why this blog is critical to change the perception about the Duke cesspool. I hope that others carry on when KC goes abroad next month.

You see, it simply is not fair that they should be permitted not only to proclaim their innocence, but also to have it publicly proclaimed. Holloway was not prepared for such a conclusion, so the very fact that they were innocent actually (in Holloway's twisted thinking) victimized Holloway herself.

Look,Hollowats position is a sinecure of sorts. This is a person with no recognizable skills to enable her to support herself.The authorities at duke have created a class of non scholrly profs,at no cost to themselves-except the embarassment people like this cause Duke. I'm a physician and recall(20 some years ago) when we had a two daycourse in sexuality on pornfilms.I begged off sayinf I'd already done sufficient field work on them.This is the same nonsense.

"What we lost with integration was the intimacy between our education and the people who were professionally trained and culturally trained to care about us. Those teachers believed in us, and that is the most important part of a child’s development."K. Holloway, quoted in KC's 8:51 update.----------------------------------------I think this contains an important truth -- that teachers should feel and communicate affinity with, and belief in, their students. Those who can't or don't would be better off in another line of work, for their own sakes and for their students'. Doubtless, as Holloway implies, it is damaging to children's development to sense, correctly, that their teachers don't give a damn about them or, worse, are actively hostile to them or to people like them in general.

That is precisely why the conduct of Holloway, Wood, the rest of the 88 and the other faculty potbangers -- towards their own students -- was so despicable.

Af at 9:11 says "Ms. Holloway needs to address this problem head on. Unfortunately the blame game is much easier to play." I would add that the blame game is not only easy to play, but that she is very good at it, to the tune (I would estimate) of $150-$200K per year. Of course, you can only play it this well at elite institutions like Duke that by definition are closed off from the very problems these professors claim to want to solve. And don't think that it is merely a Duke problem, as we have seen that schools like Vanderbilt and Cornell are delighted to take these losers off Duke's hands, accompanied (I am sure) by significant salary increases.

Ms. Holloway has no legal qualifications whatever. She probably did pick up some knowledge of the criminal justice system during the (successful) prosecutions of her son for multiple rapes, robberies and homicide (of white people.)

Michael Ignatieff, a Canadian politician and former Harvard Professor, wrote in the August 5 NYT Magazine that, "The philosopher Isaiah Berlin once said that the trouble with academics and commentators is that they care more about whether ideas are interesting than whether they are true." Sure enough, we are seeing Holloway and her ilk pontificate on things that they consider interesting, the facts be damned. Ironically, they believe themselves to be public intellectuals, but they don't bother to get their stories straight. Some intellectuals!

..."What we lost with integration was the intimacy between our education and the people who were professionally trained and culturally trained to care about us. Those teachers believed in us, and that is the most important part of a child’s development."...K. Holloway, quoted in KC's 8:51 update.----------------------------------------...I think this contains an important truth -- that teachers should feel and communicate affinity with, and belief in, their students. Those who can't or don't would be better off in another line of work, for their own sakes and for their students'. Doubtless, as Holloway implies, it is damaging to children's development to sense, correctly, that their teachers don't give a damn about them or, worse, are actively hostile to them or to people like them in general....That is precisely why the conduct of Holloway, Wood, the rest of the 88 and the other faculty potbangers -- towards their own students -- was so despicable. ::Absolutely! Well Said. Suppose they don't think of themselves as teachers?::GP

It would appear that people like Karla FC wish to make sure that their insular and segregated agendas are carried through right up 'til the end of life.

Notice "end of life care for African Americans". Not even looming death will deter Holloway and her ilk from making broad "race" distinctions:

Following the publication of Passed On, and as a core faculty member of the Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life, Dr. Holloway has led national seminars and institutes on issues of end of life care, hospice and medical ethics involving African Americans. She is the featured speaker at the Institute's national seminar: "Crossing Over Jordan."

It's Holloway's throwaway paragraph at the end that really gets my goat. Holloway's a fricking teacher, for christ's sake, but she instantly sneers at teachers pleading it's impossible to teach black students if black parents refuse to help. "There are no books at home..." It's chilling how Holloway instantly barks at the teachers to quit bothering her with the real cause for black educational failure. Holloway isn't interested in reality, she's interested in metanarrative.

It's always the fault of racism - never of personal responsibility. And screw trying to make Holloway change her mind about that.

Except - it's the black kids being screwed. In my city of San Francisco, just yesterday the papers published the catastrophic failure rates of blacks versus whites in public schools. You had to squint and parse through the results because the PC paper didn't want to admit it - but when you finally got the numbers, they revealed that black children flunked at nearly TWICE the rate of white children. This was even if black kids went to the same schools as white kids, had the same teachers, took the same tests, etc. Everything was the same except for one thing. At night one race of children went home to parents who read to their kids, made them do their homework and helped them study - and the other race didn't.

But don't waste your time telling Holloway that. The real reason of why educational failure is split along race lines is NOT the kind of 'listening statement' Holloway wants to hear.

It is quite true that 'urban' murders are not accorded much significance by the rest of the country. The main reason that the recent Newark killings got so much attention is that our sister city was once again on the verge of riot. But I think this is more about class and sex than about race. The murder of a pretty middle class girl will always get the media's attention even if she is not white, as in the recent NYU murder.

Race and Gender, Race and Gender, such a narrow world view. Invariably you trap yourself when you hold such narrow-mindedness.

If you watched TV, shows like Greta's or the various CSI dramas, you might think white females had the highest chance of being murdered in the USA. In fact about 75% of murder victims are men and black men have the highest per capita by far. White women have a relatively low per capita rate of being murdered. One could make a legitimate argument that our society is racist, by over reporting white murder victims, and sexist, by over reporting female murder victims. In other words, America values white lives more than black and female lives more than male.

For a Holloway this presents a quandary. While the racist part supports their world view the sexist part is opposite. Therefore the best they can make their argument is anecdotal and/or unsupported like Holloway's piece here.

The sad fact is that most of the money that is spent through entitlement programs only perpetuates these problems. Set up a system where the most attractive "career" is being an unwed mother and guess what? The poulation dynamics shift and you wind up w/ many more children w/ broken families. Instead of erradicating poverty, you succeed only in scaling up the numbers and creating more trouble and misery. You then get to divert a huge fraction of society's resources to fighting the fires that you have started or stoked -- while other resources are being consumed by the arson.

In my view, this benefits those who use identity politics and base emotional responses like fear to exploit the situation for their own personal gains. It harms society on the whole to an extent that staggers. And, it moves the political center. Activist tacticts for taking over the terms of any debate are then used to further distance public policy from what objective truth makes self-evident: things are not working.

We ought not run large-scale uncontrolled expiraments (like the "Great Society") on ourselves. The social sciences, when they are not really the furtherance of a personal social adgenda, can inform debate and allow us to rise above mistakes that are wired-in biological responses that don't work when we aren't existing as tribal clans, fighting zero-sum battles for scarce resources. Trying things on a small scale (at the level of individual states) and then copying best-practices is another obvious improvement -- but one that would run against the self-interests of the exploiters.

We have lots of data -- eons of human experience. Yet most of these radical mushheads idolize some of the worst examples history has produced. They have gotten pretty good at perpetuating themselves and furthering their vision of how things ought to be.

Unfortunately, it is all too clear that what they desire is not equal opportunity, not even mandated equal outcomes, but nothing short of a world where those who share their special identity get to hold down and exploit the "others".

The many cases we have seen where A implies racism and not A also implies racism serve to crytalize the simple truth that a big reason things are not working is because the most activist "workers" are really the agents of distruction.

Sometimes I wonder if I am reading DIW or the Onion. Part of me thinks KC is putting us all on, because no one could be this stupid, could they?

The problem with a separate but equal public education system, we were told, was that it was never truly equal in practice (putting aside the inconvenient question of whether the infamous "two piles" of college applications at the University of Michigan is as equal as it is separate, even by design). We were told that if blacks could go to the same schools with the same resources, they would be able to compete and deliver results (once blacks received "equal opportunity" they would have a chance to fairly compete, we were told).

One generation of equal opportunity later, we are now told that the equal opportunity wrought by integration hurt blacks. We are told that math tests (!) are culturally biased. We are told that teachers in the system don't care enough about blacks. When are people like Hollow-way going to take as much interest in holding blacks accountable for black underperformance as they do in seeking white accountability for the same? Every time some excuse-mongering apologist like Hollow-way comes along with tripe like this, she personally pushes the snooze botton on true minority advancement. Have I lost my mind? Is it really her theory that someone else is accountable for her community's failure to take advantage of free public education?

In India, the school children didn't get forced bussing into suburban, American high schools. I dare say some of Indian homes lack plumbing, let alone current text books. Somehow without a victim cultural and pandering and excuse-hustling political left, India's masses have risen from third world poverty to global economic power. I can only imagine how Karla thinks this came to be.

Damnit, I'm tired of banging my head into my keyboard reading about all of the problems some of you folks seem to have INSERTING HYPERLINKS into Blog comments!!!!!!!!!!!!

Below is a tutorial from my "forthcoming" publication titled, Why Old White Men Won't Let Me Play Golf at Their Private Club.

This tutorial is part of Chapter One: "The Terrible Injustice of Why Old White Men Can Insert Hyperlinks and I Can't!"

Here we go!

To successfully create a hyperlink, you must insert "hyper text markup language" (html) into your Blog comment text that will signal to a site-user's computer to display a hyper link. Other html can be used to signal a computer to display bold and italic text, etc. etc. etc.

I will now do a narrative of what you must type into your comment form to create the hyperlink. The reason I will use a narrative and not type the ACTUAL html is that when it is typed and published here, it becomes a hyperlink and you cannot "see" the underlying language.

1. First you type left carrot, then make a SPACE (with your spacebar), then type the letters HREF, then the equal sign, like this: < HREF=. This is the only time you make a space, the rest of the typing is done WITHOUT any spaces, except for the Title of the link as you will see later.

2. Next, type a quotation mark, like this: "

3. Then you enter the address (URL --- Uniform Resource Locater) of the website that you want to send folks to see, in this case it is, http://onespook.blogspot.com/

4. Next, type another quotation mark, like this: "

5. Then type a right carrot, like this: >

6. Then, WITHOUT skipping a space, type the Title that you want for your hyperlink, in this case, Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case. NOTE: you MAY skip spaces in the Title, as demonstrated here. You can have the Title be anything you wish; for this I could have just as easily used, KCs New Book, for example.

7. Then, WITHOUT skipping a space, type a left carrot; right slash; A; and a right carrot, like this: < / A >, but DO NOT skip any spaces.

THAT'S IT!!!!!!!!! You've done it. You can then select "Preview" in the Blogger Comment Form and preview the hyperlink you just made. If you did it correctly, it will show in Blue in your Preview. If you put your cursor over it, it will show the URL of the site you have chosen.

Here's a BIG TIP! Once you have successfully created a hyperlink, COPY it and PASTE the text of it to a document on your computer. That way, when you want to make another one, all you have to do is to copy and paste in a new URL and a new title, and you have a new hyperlink! Imagine!

For those of you who are "Hyperlinkers-in-training," I have posted this entire tutorial here:

I read this and couldn't resist bringing it over here. This is an excerpt from the H-S editorial page today.

With all the enormous and very real problems a place like Durham has right now--especially if they are trying to convey that the Whichard Committee is serious--one would think their editorializing might reflect that reality....at least some of the time.

LOL! This is too much:

Over in Charlotte, Mayor Pat McCrory has been selected, along with 36 other mayors, for a photo spread and a story in Esquire magazine touting cities and their political leaders.

As part of the story, the Associated Press reported that the magazine asked the mayors questions such as who inspires them, why they ran for office and to describe their biggest challenges. Also, as part of the deal, the mayors were dressed in expensive designer clothes and photographed for the magazine's September edition.

We can't help wonder why our own Mayor Bill Bell wasn't invited to participate in the Esquire spread. Unlike McCrory, who prides himself on dressing frugally, Bell is a sharp dresser and could have supplied his own gear for the photo shoot.

Holloway is a thoughtful, capable academician. This markes her behavior in the lacrosse affair all the more horrible as a display of narrow minded bigotry. She attempted to get all she could out of this terrible situation. Her behavior was not unlike those who would incite to lynch. Is it too oo bad she didn't read about the successful Frank's lynching in Georgia in 1915? Frank was a Jew accused of raping a young white girl . . . not to matter what the facts of that case were because the facts don't matter when there is a lynching to be had . . . there is only a sense of what for whom . . . and like those who participated in that horror she is skilled. There were those who were the privileged of that society who led the charge, and like some African potentate she holds a position of privilege of special immunity from which to . . . encourage others to castrate . . . emasculate . . . deprive . . . and pursue her own race/gender/class agenda of social activism against young white males no matter the facts . . . after all its not about the truth . . . nor is it about her own responsibility in the matter, nor is it about shame. It is really about blame, and blame is an important resource for people like Karla. It is no wonder the Duke administration paid these people off . . . settled any of their civic responsibilities out of court.

I'd like to propose a solution to the undereducation of minorities if, in fact, it exists. Others have already recounted the numerous possible cultural and familial reasons for this phenomenon. For purposes of my proposal, I'll assume that there is a systemic problem with minority achievement that can only be addressed by changing the rules.

So...lets take the welfare system one step further. Lets adopt a policy that was used the populate Colonial America. In early days, people of means were provided land in exchange for each person that they sponsored and brought to the New World. If I recall correctly, each sponsored person entitled the sponsor to 100 acres of land.

So, lets let an objectively defined graduation from high in "targeted areas" be the equivalent of arrival in the New World. By objectively defined, I mean defined by criteria that could be evaluated by any neutral person who, upon review, would arrive at comparable views of performance. By targeted areas, I mean thatnot all geographic areas and not all schools and not all children require for somoeone to "pay" for educational "transport" to high school graduation.

What would be the reward to the sponsor and the student? For the sponsor, who would formally "adopt" the student as his or her charge, a cash payment of at least $20,000. If the Army can offer $20,000 signing bonuses, surely an amount equal to or greater would be money well spent if the result was an educated person who had skills that a hiring business would value. Or even better, perhaps it would incent the guidance of an educable person who subsequently finds that they can pursue a higher education.

Now, the sponsor could be one or both parents. Or an uncle or a grandparent or even mercenary sponsors who live in the targeted area, but have no familial relationship. But, once signed on as a sponsor, say in the 9th or 10th grade, the sponsor would have a clear incentive to make certain that the student was in fact being educated and to supplement that education when necessary, by for example checking homework, etc. The cash payment could be heavily back-end weighted, but progress payments would reinforce the process. Of course, there would be a necessity for substitute sponsors in the case of death, illness or the like. But as a child progresses through school, the back-end weighted cash payment would have a greater and greater present value, which would economically incent substitute sponsors.

For the student, a similar cash incentive, but only in the form of tuition assistance at any recognized technical school, junior college, college or research university. But if sufficient to defray the costs of the prototypical community college for at least 2 years, every child would know that his/her family's economic circumstances did not preclude seeking an education.

So just as it was 400 years ago, sponsors today could transport poor and disenfranchised youth from a life with no hope to a life with light at the tunnnel's end.

Holloway continues to mourn her own son, and wants the world to join her. She didn't fail as a parent, it was society.

Many years ago when I lived in Wayne County Mi, a Detroit TV station reported violent death almost every day, with film at 11:00. Finally, they were accused of making the black community look bad and more!

“The loss of urban youth is a daily story of violence -- drive-by shootings into homes and onto front porches and in our streets and neighborhoods.”::::

Why it is that Holloway is not concerned about all these killings and just headlines? Most of these killings are of blacks killing blacks. Most of the mayors, and chiefs of police are black and in most of the large PDs, the majority of officers are minority members. Quit worrying about sympathetic headlines and get black leaders to do something to curb the killings. How were the headlines when your son was involved in a murder?::::"But we rarely see more than the blurred images of the mangled, nameless bodies of Iraqis whose loved ones will similarly mourn their passing. We do not know or inquire after their grief.":::::Hello, Ms Holloway—the Iraqis are our enemies! They are trying to kill our military! Did you reach out to the family that was victimized by your son? Do you think the victims of the Hillside Strangler wanted to reach out to the killers? How about Hitler’s family?:::::"BUT HOW WELL AND HOW CONSISTENTLY do these same reporters follow the stories of the victims of local tragedies that are tainted with the violence that infects too many urban communities? How often are they assigned to appear at the churches, to follow the families to the gravesites?":::::Did it occur to you that maybe reporters are afraid of going into the these neighborhoods? How many of these victims actually have funerals? I was aware that many years ago, many of the remains were not even picked up. Not sure about now. :::::"But the stories of many thousands gone, without our notice, our attention, our mourning, are not easily buried. Their families count these losses as grievable. Perhaps, if our nation did, the problems of urban violence would earn a national attention that could point us toward a solution for the violent loss and the persistent vulnerability of our children and youth."::::What on earth does all that babble mean? White Americans don’t seem to have a solution you like. That’s why you have white flight. I live in a fairly new city. It is only about 30 years old. Almost the entire city is made up of gated communities. We have had to lock ourselves up. We have several black families in our community. They feel safer being locked up with a bunch of whites and Asians than living in a black neighborhood. And that is the same with most black basketball and football players.::::::"What we lost with integration was the intimacy between our education and the people who were professionally trained and culturally trained to care about us. Those teachers believed in us, and that is the most important part of a child’s development. Today, teachers say, “If a child has no books at home, what I can do?” My question is, “What do we do to help our teachers understand what our children can do, rather than what they can’t?”]:::::I am not sure about all this training to be sensitive to children improves education. To paraphrase what’s been said before “Johnny doesn’t know how to read, but he feels good about himself.” My moms is Asian, and trust me, her teachers were not sensitive. Any student, who was not excelling, got eliminated from the privilege of attending school. My father was Catholic, and he claimed that teacher nuns were the meanest people in the universe. He received corporal punishment starting at 6 years of age, and it was followed by scaring him into thinking he might end in hell. My mom became a professor and my dad an accountant, and no teacher “understood” them. Some 20 years ago we had 2 exchange students from Japan. After a couple of weeks at our high school, I asked them how it was different from theirs. Of course the first thing they mentioned was the amount of non-academic time spent at school. (sports, assemblies, homeroom, study hall, etc). They felt that the relationship between the teachers and students was not appropriate. Too familiar. Student's excuses for being late or not doing their homework were accepted with sympathy. And then in the hall the students would laugh how they had put it over on some teacher.

1. First you type left carrot, then the letter A with NO Space (I have to show a space here), then make a SPACE (with your spacebar), then type the letters HREF, then the equal sign, like this: < A HREF=. This is the only time you make a space, the rest of the typing is done WITHOUT any spaces, except for the Title of the link as you will see later.

I apologize for the error. I have also corrected the tutorial on my website here:

Your pal Kertha wrote at LS, she had insider information that Churchill was getting millions from CU for first Amenment violations. She was as right about that as she was Nurse Levicy - which means - she is wrong in both instances.

In reply to Spook - those of us who care about linking, know how. Those of us who do not care about linking, have not bothered to learn. It is a free country, after all.I worked five jobs for fifteen years to put my kids through the vest school in the USA. Others can do the same.

When Ms. Holloway recognizes that "shock", either real or feigned, plays a huge role in news coverage, she will have the answer to her own question. When the deaths of urban teenage blacks are so rare as to be shocking, the media will cover those funerals with zeal as well. Right now, sadly, it's just not news. Wish it was.

"It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" just ended. I've seen it at least 100 times and it gets better which each successive viewing.

"Otto Meyer (Phil Silvers): I wish we knew what they were going to do to us. But no matter what happens to us, what happens to you I hope will be worse.

Capt. T.G. Culpeper (Spencer Tracy): I don't think you have to worry too much about that. My wife is divorcing me, my daughter is applying to the courts to have her name changed, my mother in-law is suing me for damages, my pension has been revoked. And the only reason you 10 idiots will very LIKELY get off LIGHTLY, is that the judge will have me up there to throw the book at.

In reply to Spook - those of us who care about linking, know how. Those of us who do not care about linking, have not bothered to learn. It is a free country, after all.I worked five jobs for fifteen years to put my kids through the vest school in the USA. Others can do the same.

I'm sorry if you thought that my having written instructions on linking meant everyone on the Blog had to learn it and report back to me. Everyone is free to ignore it.

I was simply trying to help folks who had asked about how to make hyperlinks.

I'm glad your kids went to the vest school in the USA. I hope someday to wear one they made; mine never seem to fit, even when I adjust the strap in the back.

Mike said... Here's a theory about the media's lack of attention to the deaths of young blacks and hispanics: they're avoided out of the same misplaced sense of diversity and solidarity that underlies virtually all leftist thinking. In short, the media avoids such stories not because society cares nothing for the deaths of these young people, but because liberals run the media and stick to the liberal script.

There is no question that young black males, for example, meet premature, violent deaths far out of proportion to their societal numbers, but to draw attention to that fact would inevitably expose many facets of contemporary socialism/liberalism as bankrupt, so little attention is paid.

Which facets? These young men are killing each other. By and large, young black men are not killed by young white men, or young hispanic men or young asian men, but by other young black men. And these young men tend not to die on the job while supporting their families, but in drug wars or during the commission of crimes.

Tragic? Of course, but again, none of this fits liberal preconceptions of class, race, crime or behavior, so the media treads very carefully. Which theory is most likely, Prof. Holloway's, or this one?

8/18/07 3:26 AM

This one. From someone who spent eight years in the newspaper business.

I don't know if anyone mentioned this - (had to skim a bit since my hard drive crashed) - but shouldn't someone be wearing a t-shirt featuring a picture of the person Karla's son killed? (Do I have my information wrong here folks?)

Maybe of more interest is that, although Karla's daughter and new son-in-law are academics, the daughter went into the hard sciences -- she has a PhD in Physics from Harvard, which to me seems as far from the 88-oid studies as she could have possibly gone.

I am sure that the violent criminal career and bloody death of Karla Holloway's son, was and is a very painful and heart-breaking experience for her. But that was the boy's own doing, not hers, and I'm not sure it's fair to give her a bad time about it -- unless it reveals a real and specific hypocrisy on her part, which I just don't see here.

The same Karla Holloway who raised that "bad seed," also mothered the young woman who just got married, and who achieved a Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard.

But the boy was adopted -- who knows what his genetic parents were. Really makes me wonder about the old nature -vs- nurture, more than it makes me want to attack anybody's parenting.

9:49Yup. I agree.I wonder if Holloway would wear such a shirt, to honor her son's victims, to pay them some respect?Somehow, I doubt it. But she should, if she thinks that murder victims should be remembered (and I would tend to agree with her, if she had an ounce of sincerity.)She ought to wear such a shirt, if only as a symbolic albatross, as did the Mariner, if she expects others to do the same.

10:06I'm adopted, too: nurture AND nature seem to be important. Holloway might have been a very good parent. That wasn't my point. Chickens come home to roost at the oddest of times and the strangest of circumstances.She's very quick to tell others what to do, but not much for following her own advice, or so it would appear.

to 10.06am You said:"I am sure that the violent criminal career and bloody death of Karla Holloway's son, was and is a very painful and heart-breaking experience for her. But that was the boy's own doing, not hers, and I'm not sure it's fair to give her a bad time about it -- unless it reveals a real and specific hypocrisy on her part, which I just don't see here."::::

This just sounds to nice. It really sounds like the America I would like to live in. Unfortunately, most of the black leadership in this country do not adhear to that.

Just becasue I'm white, I should pay for reporations to balcks because they were slaves. I did not own slaves, and I can prove it. I am a first generation American. My husband's family come here 50 years after the Civil war. Maybe you, 10.06, can spread the gospel that most of us do not owe blacks anything. Quit blaming whites for everything. Blacks need to do it on their own, just like the rest of us.

Holloway has been trying to construct a reality in which "whitey" can be squarely blamed for everything wrong in the non-white community.

Given the violent criminal activities of her son, which ultimately led to his death, there can be no doubt that the "whitey" explanation is more comforting to her than the far more likely reason - which is that she utterly failed as a mother.

I've heard it mentioned that Bem Holloway was a bad seed. I think that it's more likely that Bem Holloway grew up in an environment where he was taught that it was OK to hate "whitey" and that anytime you failed, somehow, it was whitey's fault.

Wow, I have read here about Hate-filled Holloway before but did not know about her son's brutal, sadistic crimes.At least he got the justice he deserved.She can write stuff like: "The generational circumstance may change, but the violence done to black bodies has had a consistent history . . .". Does anyone know if she ever expressed sympathy to the victims/families for the violence done to white bodies by her son?

I might add that I also do not feverishly whip up a community and a campus to try to send people to prison for 30+ years for something they did not come close to thinking about doing.

When someone is in possession of such a mentality, "what they do" otherwise is of no interest.

However, with regard to Holloway, it is clear from her lack of true scholarship that she might be better suited hawking used cars somewhere.......and shouting a customer Listening Statement through a megaphone.

If her son had been sick for a long time, why didn't Holloway do something about it?::::::Local NewsVictim of Escaped Inmate Recounts 7 Hours of Terror

Posted: Jun 28, 1999

RALEIGH — Three inmates of the Odom Correctional Institution in Northampton County wereworking on the prison farmwhen theyattempted to escapeMonday. Officers shot all three inmates killing Bem Holloway, and wounding the other two. One of Holloway's victims hopes her story will inspire prison officials and lawmakers to change their policies.

Last year, Holloway held a young woman captive for nearly seven hours. He stabbed her, sexually assaulted her and left her to die. Holloway called himself the devil.

"He went home yesterday," his victim said, the day after Holloway was killed.

"My first thought was I'll be sleeping easier now," said the 23-year-old woman, who asked that her identity be protected. She went through her own hell on May 20, 1998, the day Holloway broke into her North Raleigh home.

He waited for her mother to leave, shortly after 8 a.m. Police believe he cased the house and waited for the younger woman to get home. At about 2 p.m., he surprised her when she returned from her college class.

Holloway carried a gun and had two knives hanging from the sides of the ball cap on his head.

For the next seven hours he would tie her up, sexually assault her, describe to her how he killed another woman and five other people, stab her, choke her and leave her to die.

"You know how you hear your life flashes before you? That happens," she said. "I kept thinking about childhood ski trips, not getting married, not having babies."

Her love of her family might have been what saved her. Her mom says she saved three lives that night: her own, her mother's and her sister's.

Her mother came home at about 7:30 p.m., and they talked him into letting them go to the bank to get him some money.

Holloway's picture was caught on the ATM camera. When they returned back to the house at about 8:15 p.m., Holloway tied up the mother in one room and the daughter in another.

It was dark in the house; Holloway had cut all the cords to the lamps. The younger woman felt the blade of the knife stabbing her in the stomach.

"I started screaming 'I love you, mom.' That's when I knew it was over." But somehow in her struggles, her legs, which were taped to the chair, became free and she got up.

He forced her back on the ground and she pretended to be dead, although she knew she could not stay down for long because her sister was expected to come home around 9 p.m.

"I felt I wasn't going to be any help to my mother or my sister if I gave up," she said.

So when she heard Holloway go down into the basement, she ran out the door to her neighbors, who called police.

"Granted, I've got scars, but I'm alive," she said.

Now more than a year later, she's strong. In May, she graduated from Wake Tech and was recently accepted toN.C. Statewhere she wants to study communications. She is also engaged to be married.

But she says her recovery would not be going so well had she known there was even a chance that Holloway could escape.

"Criminals with this kind of past, violent offenders, need to be working, but it should be within prison walls."

She hopes prison leaders and lawmakers will look at changing the policy of allowing inmates to work outside the barbed wire.

"I wish they would put themselves in our shoes; what if it was your wife, your daughter, your sister -- how would you feel?" she asks.

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About Me

I am from Higgins Beach, in Scarborough, Maine, six miles south of Portland. After spending five years as track announcer at Scarborough Downs, I left to study fulltime in graduate school, where my advisor was Akira Iriye. I have a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard, and an M.A. from the University of Chicago. At Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, I teach classes in 20th century US political, constitutional, and diplomatic history; in 2007-8, I was Fulbright Distinguished Chair for the Humanities at Tel Aviv University.

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"From the Scottsboro Boys to Clarence Gideon, some of the most memorable legal narratives have been tales of the wrongly accused. Now “Until Proven Innocent,” a new book about the false allegations of rape against three Duke lacrosse players, can join these galvanizing cautionary tales . . , Taylor and Johnson have made a gripping contribution to the literature of the wrongly accused. They remind us of the importance of constitutional checks on prosecutorial abuse. And they emphasize the lesson that Duke callously advised its own students to ignore: if you’re unjustly suspected of any crime, immediately call the best lawyer you can afford."--Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times Book Review